> disrupted a foreign government's attempt to illegally bankroll the election of candidates who are politically sympathetic or vulnerable to inducements.
I must say that my first thought when reading the title was that they disrupted the market of foreign election interference.
It's really only a matter of time before an app called Bribr "democratises lobbying" by allowing users to make microtransactions directly to their elected representatives for influence.
And why not? Lobbying is legal if it follows the rules.
If something similar could be made legal yet crowdsourced, I would see that as progress for democracy, a "lobbying as a service" open to all: if 50M people are ready to put $1 to lobby for something they care about, it's a shame we don't currently let them be properly heard.
> because voting with votes does not really lead to representation. Right?
Indeed, it doesn't: this is because voting is susceptible to Sybil attacks, say by running ad campaigns that'll result in the less fortunate voters voting against their own interest after having been convinced to do so. This is also how a bunch of dictators get bootstrapped in democracies.
The core problem with voting is that every vote carries the same weight: lobbying corrects for that, by letting group of people organize so that their voices may not be drowned out, which inverts the power relationship (ads to convince voters => group of voters organizing to make their voice heard)
"A Chinese spy ring attempted to bankroll NSW Labor candidates in the upcoming federal election in an attempt to get MPs elected to Australia’s Parliament.
The plot was foiled by the nation’s counter-espionage agency ASIO, preventing the spies from installing sympathetic candidates into Labor’s preselection process."
The opposition party are already spinning this to claim that the Labor party are friendly to China.
This honestly makes me suspicious. Arm of government says opposition of current government is corrupted. How convenient.
I don't know if ASIO is/isn't/could be weaponized as a political tool or if the sort of person that ends up there can/does use their position to push their personal politics. But it is plausible that it happens and by the nature of the organization such a hypothesis can't really be scrutinized.
No, I recall a bunch of suspicious meetings between Trump, his sons, his close confidants and known Russian intelligence assets (keep in mind that includes people like ambassadors) that they lied about having happened until we were presented with evidence that they did, at which point they tried to downplay them.
Yes. And those accusations were true. And, quite possibly, these Australian accusations are also true. It may or may not be a convenient truth, or a truth withheld until a convenient time, or a similar truth about the other party might also be known to be true but not released. Or maybe Labour really is the more corrupt party and ASIO are earnestly working to protect Australian interests. All of these hypothesis are congruent with the evidence.
There's a difference between being skeptical of politically convenient press releases versus being a contrarian that just assumes anything politically convenient must be a lie.
Maybe you have reply notifications: this seemed like the closest thing (not close at all, I'm afraid) you'd get to both a complete list, and not having to dig through multiple rants.
I'm going to go with a slightly higher bar. It is perfectly plausible that these particular candidates really do have some relation or funding from the PRC. But can you say for sure that ASIO doesn't systematically fail to scrutinize the connections and funding of Liberal party politicians?
The inherent problem with what I've said is that its a very plausible and precedented thing for a spy organization to do, but it is also a fundamentally untestable hypothesis because you can't really scrutinize the work of spies. So the state of reality where ASIO is earnestly fighting corruption looks the same as the state of reality where ASIO are a political tool. How can you be certain which reality you are in?
ASIO has levelled claims against people connected to government ministers as well e.g. Gladys Liu.
Australia doesn't have the same level of deep bipartisanship that exists in the US so I wouldn't assume that our intelligence agency is a political tool.
>spinning this to claim that the Labor party are friendly to China.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. The Labor party are openly friendly with China, this isn't some kind of spin. Not only that, but their supporters in the left wing media are even more so.
If anyone doubts that, have a read of this article from the main left-wing news site in Australia that is, no joke, trying to spin this into a story about anti-vaxers working with the Russians to interfere in the election.
>this article from the main left-wing news site in Australia
Honestly, I read the ABC all the time and the editorial position is very clearly anti-CCP. Stan Grant in particular is one of the most ardent and consistent critics of Xi Jinping, posting articles about their military expansion and increasing concentration of power even when nothing in particular has happened that week to prompt it.
Stating that one particular party, or any reputable media organisation (ABC and The Guardian are two I read) supports the CCP or apologises for them is ridiculous.
Ok maybe I was being overly hyperbolic before, but the facts here are clear:
The CCP used people in Australia to get close to, and pay off, politicians who they thought would be inclined to favor their cause. Every single one of them belonged to the Labor party. I don't think anyone can call this spin, and I don't think any honest person would doubt that the media would be going absolutely bananas right now if all these people were Liberal party. Hell, they even tried to smear a Liberal party politician as a Chinese spy simply because she was a member of an overseas student club, that is how low they would sink.
As for Stan Grant, he has been approached multiple times by both the National party and Liberal party to run for parliament with them. He was then put into the ABC by Ida Buttrose after she came to the ABC with express goal of evening out the extreme left wing bias at the ABC. His purpose at being at the ABC is literally to give a different perspective to their usual stuff.
As for the ABC and Guardian, they are constantly pushing their audience to believe that democracy is deeply flawed. They are also constantly talking about what an amazing economic system China has and that their model is the way of the future. The only reason they are anti CCP in particular is because the entire word-wide left turned anti-China back in January 2019 overnight.
> Every single one of them belonged to the Labor party.
Except for Gladys Liu. :P
I will concede the point generally here, though - Labor's far left faction (and left-wingers in general) do have a weirdly distorted view of China and are more susceptible to Chinese influence and propaganda, and the whole Sam Dastyari incident doesn't help.
Again, though, I don't think that means the party as a whole is corrupt to the core. Labor supported pretty much all of the anti-CCP legislation that has gone through in the last few years, including AUKUS, and I can't see that radically changing any time soon.
>As for Stan Grant
I didn't know all that about him. Interesting. I just saw his aboriginal activism work and assumed he was left-leaning. Thinking about it for one second, I'm not surprised to find out that he simply cares about his community and wants to see them succeed.
>As for the ABC and Guardian, they are constantly pushing their audience to believe that democracy is deeply flawed.
I read both publications regularly, and don't get that idea. They report that democracy is under attack, yes, but they're not cheering for its destruction. The Guardian tends to lead somewhat anti-capitalist (hilarious considering how middle-class their average reader is, literally sucking at the teat of the system), but again they're not proposing China's even-more-unequal system any more than the rest of the world does (which, as you noted, basically stopped happening once they fucked with Hong Kong).
Chinese in Australia vote Libreal which is our Ulta-Conversative Ring-Wing party (so backwards)
This is 100% bullshit made up by our corrupt government just like it does every year during an election. Literly the definition of fake news right here. labor or the greens dont stand a chance, they have no connections in the media and couldnt get a fake news story started even if it wanted.
Australia is controlled by mining magnate racist f*cks who only care about becoming even bigger billionaires, keeping the asians out and retaining power/land-rights by owning media/large corporations in regional areas, demonising the aboringal cultures while scamming them for land-rights, and play yet "we love the working class card", sponsor the best sporting events, and literly lie and cheat and steal until to reinforce there own corruption.
its a solid game-plan thats been refined over the last 25yrs and turned this country into a backwater of political scammers and donars elite.
Both major parties here are friendly with ASIO, having both given them enough overreaching powers over the last 20 years that they've pretty much got free reign to do whatever they want.
The CCP is probably just bankrolling whoever they think will be sympathetic, Gladys Liu is a Liberal with a giant question mark over her head at the moment.
I wish I could go into the site and edit the headline to read "Australian spy agency disrupts foreign interference into election" to prevent ambiguity and reduce backtracking by readers.
Now imagine how many similar cases there are around the world that haven't been "discovered" officially. Both China and Russia are using similar tactics. I guess, at the time being, China is the more dangerous one as CCP is much richer than poor war-focussed Russia.
I wouldn't even just look at elections or government interference.
Universities in particular are rife with Chinese influence not just as the administrative level but amongst the students. I personally know of Hong Kong students who have been threatened by CCP operatives in Australia for being involved in protests.
Look at what he said. ASIO has said almost nothing. Most of what is being reported at the moment is speculation and from anonymous sources. My reading of what ASIO actually said, this could just be a local businessman caught laundering political donations from a foreign government. Probably just business as usual except for the election cycle and recent tensions with Russia and China. In fact, one of the few things ASIO actually did say was this is nothing unusual and happening all the time.
Yeah this is really important. ASIO was politicised from its very beginning, spending enormous amounts of its history "investigating" the Labor Party, Australia's opposition party in the duopoly.
Personally I feel this behaviour is counter productive to Chinese interests long term as in an open society these actions become public. For any good it does, it will also generate mistrust, ill feeling and potentially by extreme groups as leverage for fear/hate.
As an Australian living in California I’m surprised we don’t see more such issues in California elections. There is out-of-state but still US money in referendum questions but that seems to be it, despite the fact that California’s economy is a lot larger than Australia’s.
Australia is of strategic value to China, as it spent the last 20 years as a Chinese mining province, so I can understand their wanting to meddle in Aussie elections (if these allegations are true). But why not California?
China has insatiable hunger for land in asia, fish in all the seas, and Australia. Any idea why? It's not like they use all of it. At some point most nations would deem it not worth the trouble to constantly be doing this bickering with all of their neighbours, I dont see that with China. One might say that they have only perfected the US system, but China does it a whole other tone-deaf way.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadI must say that my first thought when reading the title was that they disrupted the market of foreign election interference.
If something similar could be made legal yet crowdsourced, I would see that as progress for democracy, a "lobbying as a service" open to all: if 50M people are ready to put $1 to lobby for something they care about, it's a shame we don't currently let them be properly heard.
Indeed, it doesn't: this is because voting is susceptible to Sybil attacks, say by running ad campaigns that'll result in the less fortunate voters voting against their own interest after having been convinced to do so. This is also how a bunch of dictators get bootstrapped in democracies.
The core problem with voting is that every vote carries the same weight: lobbying corrects for that, by letting group of people organize so that their voices may not be drowned out, which inverts the power relationship (ads to convince voters => group of voters organizing to make their voice heard)
"A Chinese spy ring attempted to bankroll NSW Labor candidates in the upcoming federal election in an attempt to get MPs elected to Australia’s Parliament.
The plot was foiled by the nation’s counter-espionage agency ASIO, preventing the spies from installing sympathetic candidates into Labor’s preselection process."
The opposition party are already spinning this to claim that the Labor party are friendly to China.
I don't know if ASIO is/isn't/could be weaponized as a political tool or if the sort of person that ends up there can/does use their position to push their personal politics. But it is plausible that it happens and by the nature of the organization such a hypothesis can't really be scrutinized.
Didn't this happen during Obama's presidency, when Hillary and Trump were running?
That's my recollection at least.
There's a difference between being skeptical of politically convenient press releases versus being a contrarian that just assumes anything politically convenient must be a lie.
> Yes. And those accusations were true.
What's the rundown on this scandal? A link or TL;DR is fine -- not trying to derail.
Here is a pretty up to date summary, though, if a bit partisan: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/12/08/why_th...
https://themillenniumreport.com/2016/10/the-top-100-most-dam...
Do you really want Australia heavily depending on China like what happened in Australia previously?
The inherent problem with what I've said is that its a very plausible and precedented thing for a spy organization to do, but it is also a fundamentally untestable hypothesis because you can't really scrutinize the work of spies. So the state of reality where ASIO is earnestly fighting corruption looks the same as the state of reality where ASIO are a political tool. How can you be certain which reality you are in?
Australia doesn't have the same level of deep bipartisanship that exists in the US so I wouldn't assume that our intelligence agency is a political tool.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. The Labor party are openly friendly with China, this isn't some kind of spin. Not only that, but their supporters in the left wing media are even more so.
If anyone doubts that, have a read of this article from the main left-wing news site in Australia that is, no joke, trying to spin this into a story about anti-vaxers working with the Russians to interfere in the election.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-10/russian-agent-suspect...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-11/china-accused-attempt...
Which news site are you referring to?
Honestly, I read the ABC all the time and the editorial position is very clearly anti-CCP. Stan Grant in particular is one of the most ardent and consistent critics of Xi Jinping, posting articles about their military expansion and increasing concentration of power even when nothing in particular has happened that week to prompt it.
Stating that one particular party, or any reputable media organisation (ABC and The Guardian are two I read) supports the CCP or apologises for them is ridiculous.
The CCP used people in Australia to get close to, and pay off, politicians who they thought would be inclined to favor their cause. Every single one of them belonged to the Labor party. I don't think anyone can call this spin, and I don't think any honest person would doubt that the media would be going absolutely bananas right now if all these people were Liberal party. Hell, they even tried to smear a Liberal party politician as a Chinese spy simply because she was a member of an overseas student club, that is how low they would sink.
As for Stan Grant, he has been approached multiple times by both the National party and Liberal party to run for parliament with them. He was then put into the ABC by Ida Buttrose after she came to the ABC with express goal of evening out the extreme left wing bias at the ABC. His purpose at being at the ABC is literally to give a different perspective to their usual stuff.
As for the ABC and Guardian, they are constantly pushing their audience to believe that democracy is deeply flawed. They are also constantly talking about what an amazing economic system China has and that their model is the way of the future. The only reason they are anti CCP in particular is because the entire word-wide left turned anti-China back in January 2019 overnight.
Except for Gladys Liu. :P
I will concede the point generally here, though - Labor's far left faction (and left-wingers in general) do have a weirdly distorted view of China and are more susceptible to Chinese influence and propaganda, and the whole Sam Dastyari incident doesn't help.
Again, though, I don't think that means the party as a whole is corrupt to the core. Labor supported pretty much all of the anti-CCP legislation that has gone through in the last few years, including AUKUS, and I can't see that radically changing any time soon.
>As for Stan Grant I didn't know all that about him. Interesting. I just saw his aboriginal activism work and assumed he was left-leaning. Thinking about it for one second, I'm not surprised to find out that he simply cares about his community and wants to see them succeed.
>As for the ABC and Guardian, they are constantly pushing their audience to believe that democracy is deeply flawed.
I read both publications regularly, and don't get that idea. They report that democracy is under attack, yes, but they're not cheering for its destruction. The Guardian tends to lead somewhat anti-capitalist (hilarious considering how middle-class their average reader is, literally sucking at the teat of the system), but again they're not proposing China's even-more-unequal system any more than the rest of the world does (which, as you noted, basically stopped happening once they fucked with Hong Kong).
This is 100% bullshit made up by our corrupt government just like it does every year during an election. Literly the definition of fake news right here. labor or the greens dont stand a chance, they have no connections in the media and couldnt get a fake news story started even if it wanted.
Australia is controlled by mining magnate racist f*cks who only care about becoming even bigger billionaires, keeping the asians out and retaining power/land-rights by owning media/large corporations in regional areas, demonising the aboringal cultures while scamming them for land-rights, and play yet "we love the working class card", sponsor the best sporting events, and literly lie and cheat and steal until to reinforce there own corruption.
its a solid game-plan thats been refined over the last 25yrs and turned this country into a backwater of political scammers and donars elite.
The CCP is probably just bankrolling whoever they think will be sympathetic, Gladys Liu is a Liberal with a giant question mark over her head at the moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Liu
https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gladys-liu-s-beijing...
I’m sure the former member of a Chinese propaganda group is not upto anything suspect.
Universities in particular are rife with Chinese influence not just as the administrative level but amongst the students. I personally know of Hong Kong students who have been threatened by CCP operatives in Australia for being involved in protests.
Are you perhaps forgetting another major player?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-10/russian-agent-suspect...
Edit: wow, and at the end they even try to imply that anti-vaxers are involved with the Russians (with carefully chosen weasel words of course).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-11/china-accused-attempt...
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/beijing-controls-chi...
And universities are targeted for both students and lecturers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57647418
Personally I feel this behaviour is counter productive to Chinese interests long term as in an open society these actions become public. For any good it does, it will also generate mistrust, ill feeling and potentially by extreme groups as leverage for fear/hate.
Australia is of strategic value to China, as it spent the last 20 years as a Chinese mining province, so I can understand their wanting to meddle in Aussie elections (if these allegations are true). But why not California?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Swalwell#Contact_with_Chi...
The true enemy to the Australian people is the Liberal party itself.
If you are Australian vote them out.